I hope you are doing well as you continue on in another week in January. I enjoy getting back to a routine but I also really loaded up my calendar with Stampin'Up!-related events, classes and fun so I'm busier than I thought I would be. I've had some wonderful new customers come to a workshop as well as two local businesses interested in my cards for their clients. It's so gratifying and also humbling to work hard on a hobby or art form and have other people think it's great.
In every catalog, there are new stamp sets introduced that can be classified as "sleeper sets". This is my term, not really anything official. What I mean by that is that there are stamp sets that don't get a lot of notice or publicity. You won't see them much on Pinterest initially (until they go viral) and you tend to flip right by the page they are on. Their beauty is possibly understated or not as obvious at first glance. Today, I'm excited to show you one of those sets. It's called "Golden Afternoon" and it's the perfect pastoral theme that you can use for so many reasons. The sentiments are tender and touching, just what you need for special times and special people. I had some fun playing with this recently and wanted to show you my cards:
For this first one, I wanted to use some Designer Series Paper that featured leaves so I grabbed this sheet from the "Nature's Poem" paper set. I knew it would be hard for the tree design to stand out on such a busy background with just stamping so I embossed the image on with Versamark Ink and some retired Early Espresso embossing powder. That gave the image enough depth and color saturation that it showed up nicely on this background. The color scheme of Mint Macaron and Early Espresso go great together!
This card is taking the tree stamp in a different direction. I stamped with Black Momento ink, then colored the leaves and trunk with our watercolor pencils, then blended the color with a blender pen. I am almost always using a blender pen with my watercolor pencils. It spreads the color around nicely and also makes the color brighter and more visible. It takes away any unwanted pencil lines as well. I actually colored this fairly quickly, not working about staying in the lines too much because I knew the blender pen would make it "okay". Don't you love the birds stamp? I kept this card extremely uncluttered with no extra embellishments or paper. The "Tailored Tag" punch is a real favorite for sentiments and popping that up with dimensionals makes it stand out.
For my last card, I used the other tree image in the set, which is a much smaller scale. I wanted to go with a non-obvious color scheme so I chose blue. I used a Balmy Blue piece of Designer Series Paper from the Tranquil Textures set and stamped right on it with Night of Navy. I again added the birds and dressed this card up a bit with a doily and some Night of Navy retired ribbon. This card could easily be made into a sympathy card as well by changing the sentiment.
I love giving these kind of stamp sets some love and attention. They quite often end up being a favorite that I hang on to for years. I've listed my supplies below so you can order what you need to make these cards or some of your own designs. It's always a good time to start stamping but it's especially good timing now during Sale-A-Bration! Check out the website for all the details - there's a link on the right side bar.
I'm off to register for OnStage which will be held in April, as well as teach two card classes today. Already it's a great day!
Happy Stampin',
Sarah
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